Finally, famously Monumental

Yes, I'm finishing up my series of Four Corners posts with the area's most famous scenery, that I've hinted at, perhaps rather clumsily, in some previous posts.

We finished up the day we got off the river, after our quick trip to the Goosenecks, with an excursion south for dinner, into Arizona and back to the Navajo Nation. Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is the home of the iconic rock features you see above, familiar from so many movies (I knew the ever-helpful Wikipedia would have a listing!).

As you might have gathered from some of my other photos, you can see these unmistakable landmarks for miles around. Here's a sampling of nearby scenery with MV in the distance...

peering over the horizon at Goosenecks State Park

a fellow tourist took this shot for us at Muley Point

...and here's a look from one of the many scenic pull-outs along the road, getting closer to John Ford country...

We didn't really plan it this way, but it turned out that we were at the Park's main lodge (aptly named The View) at an absolutely perfect time: sunset.

the blogger soaks up scenery from a favorite movie

view from The View's soup/salad station

The food was good, too! And the view of the fading sunset on those rocks more than made up for the fact that they don't serve wine, even with food, at any Navajo Nation establishment.

The lodge also has a nice gift shop, with some really gorgeous Navajo jewelry, pottery, and textiles that was lots of fun to ogle, even though buying anything (other than a few souvenirs) was 'way beyond our budget. The whole operation was really top-shelf, with lots of friendly and helpful young Navajo service people around.

The mix of tourists was also interesting. As we had found at Canyon de Chelly, and were to see at the other stops we made over the next few days, there are lots of Europeans drawn to the iconic wide-open spaces of the Four Corners. We're used to Spanish being the second-most common language you hear, but on this trip it was German!

It would be really sweet to spend a night or two here, but you have to plan very far ahead; they fill up regularly a year out. 

That will have to wait for a future trip, as will the guided driving trips that take you really close to those wonderful MV rocks.

What a wonderful part of our wonderful country this is! We thoroughly enjoyed our time here and hope to return some day and catch the many sites that we missed on this go-round.

A jewel of a canyon

Being a lover of rocks, it's not surprising that I'm also a lover of canyons. One of the most beautiful and striking that I've ever seen is in Arizona.

No, not the grand canyon (to be saved for a retirement trip), but one that seems to me almost as spectacular: Canyon de Chelly. (The last part of the name is pronounced "shay"; a Spanish/French corruption of the Navajo word—tséyi—for canyon. Which makes a translation of the name "canyon of canyon"—sort of like, in Britain, where avon means river...so River Avon="river river.")

At any rate, we thoroughly enjoyed our much-too-brief tour of this Canyon—just over the border from New Mexico, and conveniently on our way to Utah. Parts of two days was definitely not enough time to see as much of this gorgeous National Monument as we would have liked, but we worked to fit in as much as we could.

We arrived in the afternoon, just in time to check in to the Sacred Canyon Lodge, where we'd made a reservation. Very nice accommodations, and actually inside the park, so it was easy to get to the scenic overlooks. After some brief stops at a couple of the south rim overlooks before dark, we had a scrumptious dinner at a nearby restaurant, which features dishes offering variations on delightful Navajo fry bread. I had a turkey sandwich on the stuff and Henry opted for the "Navajo taco" you can see above. (It was alternatively called "Navajo pizza" elsewhere, but the basic recipe—the fabulous pastry plus chili and salad—was the same.) Yum!

The dinner tasted especially good after our introduction to the park, which involved a little hiking to overlooks. Here are a couple of shots from our late afternoon sight-seeing:

"Spider Rock" at dusk

near Spider Rock

Inspired by this initial taste of the gorgeous scenery, we were determined to make the most of the next day's time at CdC. I was even able to be convinced to get up before dawn—and, more seriously, before breakfast—so that we could see sunrise over the canyon.

It was certainly worth the extra effort, as I think you'll agree!

super-photogenic rock at Junction overlook

more photogenic rocks

distance view

Wow! What a great experience! Aptly followed up by a nice breakfast at the lodge's cafeteria, which fortified us for a real hike.

There is one trail which visitors can take without guides down to the canyon floor. (CdC NM is jointly managed by the National Park Service and the Navajo Tribal Trust, as it is on Navajo land. Several Navajo families live in the park, some even on the canyon floor, and so tourists aren't welcome to just go wandering on their own.) Since we didn't have time for one of the guided tours—to be saved for our next visit!—we for sure wanted to take the hike down to the White House Ruin.

view from the top

It was a wonderful hike. The ruins are definitely worth seeing (you can see some pictures of them here) but for me the hike would have been worth the time and effort even without them. What an amazing canyon!

To begin with, it was a very nice trail...

...which was not all that easy to have established. Long sections of it were cut right into the rock face, like in the picture below. So neat to be able to traverse such gorgeous cliffs, experiencing these great rocks up close and personal!

We've hiked a lot of trails in a lot of different environments, but probably never one quite like this!

And, of course, the canyon scenery was all around us and breathtaking at almost every step...

view from the canyon floor

on the way back up

almost back to the top

After having seen all the overlooks on the south rim, we headed to the north side, where there are fewer viewpoints...but those few are pretty spectacular!

Antelope House Ruin is set in perhaps the most spectacular setting in the park. (Sorry, I don't have any good photos of this ruin; Henry's camera got better shots and he should be blogging about CdC soon.) 

The Antelope House overlook covers a wide area, with two endpoints. Here I am at the first one I found; the red line points out the other:

It was lots of fun clambering over the rocky canyon rim to see views from both of these overlooks...

Henry exploring the canyon rim

conveniently-placed photogenic foreground rock

One of my favorite features here was the "Navajo fortress," the large formation below that looks like it's coming out from the canyon wall in the distance. In reality, it's actually an island in the canyon, handy for making a defense against your enemies...

As I hope you'll agree, Canyon de Chelly is a really magical place, and if you find yourself in the Four Corners area, you should definitely make time for a visit. We plan to, for sure, next time we're out that way.

More ancient art & architecture

Last time I gave you a show-and-tell of the fascinating rock art and cliff dwellings we saw on our San Juan paddling trip.

But Henry and I didn't want those four days to be our entire desert southwest vacation. We spent a few days before, and a few after, touring some other wonderful places in that area. If you look at a recreation map of the Four Corners area (referring to the meeting of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico) it's astonishing how many wonderful sites are in relatively close proximity. We didn't have time to see them all, but we crammed as much into our "extra time" as we could...in the process visiting all four states and, technically, another "country"* as well.

Our first stop was at Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, which we'd heard glowing reports of from many quarters. We weren't disappointed in its scenery, which I'll review for you in upcoming posts. But, to finish up with the ancient art theme, I'll tell you first about the cliff dwellings we saw there: gorgeous examples of domestic architecture, circa 1100.

White House ruin

This fabulous site is the only one that you can hike to yourself in CdeC (other points of interest in the Canyon require a Navajo guide, and although we wanted to take one of these longer trips, we just didn't have time).

This shot can give you a better idea of the scale of the structures—it was a large settlement!—as well as illustrating a modern cultural phenomena: jewelry vendors.

More recent building has taken place along the trail, too, making the hike much more doable than it would have been without these improvements. Here's one of two tunnels carved through inconveniently-placed rock outcroppings:

Overall the hike was lots of fun, with photo opps galore all the way down to the Canyon floor and back up, and I'll show you more of these views in a later post. 

The White House ruin is on the south side of the canyon; on the north side is another impressive structure that we saw from a distance: Antelope House. Can you find it in this panoramic shot?

Spotting these cleverly-positioned structures across the canyon is a skill you have to work at a little, but once you get the hang of where to look it comes a little easier. Here's a zoom shot that shows Antelope House in more detail:

Incidentally, at a couple of the overlooks in CdC, they've implemented a very ingenious low-tech device to help people find the ruins (I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who has difficulty with this!). There are metal tubes mounted in such a way that they point right to the ruins. Thanks, CdC! These should be required at overlooks everywhere.

After our paddling adventure, another national monument was on our itinerary. This one is in Utah, Natural Bridges NM. In addition to the emponymous natural rock features, they also have an impressive cliff dwelling, Horse Collar ruin. Test your new dwelling-finding skills on the photo below:

Unfortunately, we had even less time at Natural Bridges than Canyon de Chelly and were only able to do one of their hikes, and it didn't involve a cliff dwelling. More about that scenery, though, later.

(Another bummer from our time crunch was having to missing an astronomy program at NBNM, which was the first designated International Dark Sky Park. Such a cool claim to fame! And what makes it worth another visit sometime.)

The amazing abundance of archaeological sites in this area means that not all of them are in these nationally-protected areas. There were a few just off Highway 95 between Natural Bridges and Blanding, Utah. Unfortunately, we only had time to stop at one (note the low sun in the photo): Mule Canyon ruin. As you see from the link, there is more to it than what we saw by the roadside (where the structures are partially restored) but, again, time was working against us:

As interesting as the cultural sites are, we were probably more overwhelmed by the natural scenery of the Four Corners region. I'll spend the next few posts showing you some of these gorgeous and iconic vistas.

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*A good-sized chunk of this area (especially in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico) is in the Navajo Nation's territory, as any reader of Tony Hillerman's books can tell you. This includes Canyon de Chelly, the left bank of the San Juan during our paddle, and other sites I'll show you later, such as Monument Valley. So, in a strictly administrative law sense, we did visit another country on this trip!

Out and about in Phoenix

I want to finish up my Phoenix-Spring Training posts with a miscellany of interesting glimpses of the town. We weren't there for long, but got to see a good bit of the city and enjoyed the mild weather and the occasionally quirky sights.

it's pretty easy to tell where they irrigate...view from the plane on the way in

nice view of downtown from the plane on the way home...
the stadium is what I still call "the BOB"*

we had an appropriately cool rental car...

...that was almost the same color as the green cabs we saw all over

I thought the "Sky Harbor" airport was very nice...
here's my nephew riding the tram to the light rail with me upon my arrival

street art on the platform...waiting for the light rail (the real feet are mine)

more neat public art...a stylish caduceus

handsome church and ubiquitous palm trees

nice fountain in Scottsdale

and a very nice restroom...who knew they have awards for things like this?!

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*It's now the really lame-sounding Chase Field, since Bank One got taken over. Bank One Ballpark gave it a so much snappier nickname, don't you think?

Phoenix Phood

A great part of any vacation, no matter how mini, is getting to eat out a lot, sampling the local cuisine without fear of weight gain...since vacation calories don't count, right?

Yes, we decided to give In-and-Out Burgers another chance in Arizona. You might remember that we were singularly unimpressed with our visit to one in California last summer. Happily, we discovered that our previous experience must have been an aberration. Our meal in Tempe was really scrumptious. In addition to this yummy cheeseburger and exquisitely crispy fries, Joan's chocolate shake was one of the best I've ever tasted.

This particular In-and-Out-let definitely deserved the long lines and heavy crowds we saw there. The crew was kept hopping, but they sure managed to keep the quality up...

These burgers were the last meal we had in the Phoenix area. Our first was a delicious Ariz-Mex experience at the Mariscos Playa Hermosa [seafood beautiful beach] where we also were able to eat outside in the very pleasant evening air.

I decided not to go for the seafood specialties of the house, but rather chose a Tex-Mex staple, in order to make comparisons with home. My enchiladas verdes weren't bad at all, even if the sauce was a little spicy and the rice was un-fried...

One of our best meals was at the Morning Squeeze, a popular Scottsdale eatery not far from the Rockies stadium. Brunch before the game really hit the spot.

They specialize in a variety of types of Eggs Benedict; I chose the "Billy Bob Benny," which substitutes biscuits for English muffins and sausage for ham. Plus, look at all those hash browns ... YUM!

The half-inside, half-outside ambiance of this restaurant, as well as the general decor, was quite charming. We didn't mind having to wait for our table and the food was worth it. Here's a cute wall of mugs that greets you as you enter:

I unfortunately didn't get pictures of the ballpark food we feasted on, but since we had such good meals outside the parks, we didn't have to eat much inside. A delicious cup of noodles and veggies served as lunch at the Giants game, though, and I should have snapped a picture of that. On Sunday, after our Morning Squeeze brunch, we didn't have room for much at all at the Rockies game.

Given that I was traveling with my sister Joan, we naturally spent a fair amount of time in Starbucks, and I was glad, again, that they have such yummy pastries. Here was my Tuesday morning coffee cake:

A final nice meal was a surprisingly generous and delicious salad at the Phoenix airport. You know you've hit the jackpot, vacation-food-wise, when your airport meal is worth blogging about!